Curse of Riches

How did the Wendels, one of New York's most famous Gilded Age families, disappear from history?

The Wendels built a fortune from New York real estate, and rubbed shoulders with the Astors, Vanderbilts, and Stuyvesants. But as the nineteenth century came to an end, the Wendel family tore itself apart with a series of high-profile sibling squabbles, accusations of insanity and promiscuity, false imprisonment, and unseemly legal battles over love and money.

Following six years of painstaking archival research, Claire Prentice has prised open the door of the Wendels' Fifth Avenue mansion--dubbed "the house of mystery" by the press--to reveal a fascinating and dysfunctional family imprisoned in a gilded cage.

It's a true tale stranger than any fiction, filled with vivid characters who struggle to find happiness in a world of unimaginable wealth, and a secret love story between master and maid.

In the words of one reporter writing in 1926, "You would have to go back to the works of Dickens to find a tale as curious and fascinating as that of this old mansion and its occupants."

Praise for Curse of Riches

"Gripping, and cinematic, 'Curse of Riches' electrifies readers. Prentice seamlessly blends research and narration to deliver this tale of thwarted romance, headstrong heroines and the persistence of love and a dream, even when great fortunes fall. A Succession for the Gilded Age--Curse of Riches and unfolds with the logic of a feverish dream. I couldn't put it down." -Marie Mutsuki Mockett, author of American Harvest: God, Country and Farming in the Heartland and Where the Dead Pause and the Japanese Say Goodbye

"In this deeply researched tale, supported by access to diaries, letters, legal and business documents, Claire Prentice peels back the curtain on this weird and long-forgotten family, once among the wealthiest in New York. True stories of rich people behaving badly or strangely offer a glimpse into the money, power, love, heartbreak, madness, hatred and despair of eccentric and extravagantly dysfunctional families. The secretive, stranger-than-fiction Wendels of New York during the Gilded Age embodied F. Scott Fitzgerald's oft-quoted comment on the rich: 'They are different from you and me.' It's a thrilling, shocking read." -Neal Thompson, author of The First Kennedys and A Curious Man

"Meet the Wendel family: seven reclusive adult siblings living off a family real estate fortune and growing old together in an anachronism of a house on increasingly commercialized Fifth Avenue. Claire Prentice's lively, deeply researched narrative about this mysterious clan is both a character study as well as a window into New York City from the Gilded Age to the modern era. I really loved this story." -Esther Crain, author of The Gilded Age in New York, 1870--1910, and creator of the Ephemeral New York website

"Claire Prentice's A Curse of Riches reads like something out of Henry James, but is stranger than any fiction. Here is the riveting, gothic, real-life tale of the wealthiest, weirdest Gilded Age family that you've never heard of. You won't be able to put it down." -Kevin Baker, author of America The Ingenious: How a Nation of Dreamers, Immigrants, and Tinkerers Changed the World